Ann's Clear Thoughts Blog

Work should be challenging and satisfying. It should fire you up to accomplish as much as you can and give you that great feeling of having made a difference. Unfortunately, those feelings are too rare. Too many people feel overwhelmed and overloaded. They leave work each day feeling they didn’t accomplish enough. They suffer feelings of inadequacy and frustration. They question whether their employers are reasonable and fair. Some slip into victimhood, blame their employers, and abdicate responsibility for their own success and happiness.

Persistent feelings of inadequacy and unreasonable pressure are both destructive. They eat away at a person’s confidence and determination. The goal should be to leave work each day feeling good about what you have accomplished and ready to make more progress the next day. There is simply no value in feeling overwhelmed or unhappy with your day at work.

One question I hear frequently is, “How do we know what constitutes reasonable goals?”

For the portion of your job that is predictable and repeatable and performed by several people (e.g., assembly line, processing paperwork, cleaning teeth), it is possible to measure performance, set standards, identify and disseminate best practices, and gradually increase the performance of everyone. For the portion of your job that is unpredictable and not repetitive, it is much harder to know how long things should take and what constitutes a successful day. So here are some tips that will make you more productive and make you feel more productive.

First off, at the end of each day, acknowledge what went well. Give yourself credit where credit is due. You’ll probably never finish everything. Tomorrow is another day.

If you still feel bad, give yourself a break. For most of us, those unfinished tasks won’t spark the end of the world as we know it.

Now let’s look at what you can do if you didn’t achieve as much as you thought you should have. You need to figure out why and decide what will make the next day more successful.

Were you clear about what you needed to achieve for the day overall as well as each hour or half hour or were you fishing without a concrete goal part of the time? Clear, concrete objectives are essential to speed. Don’t wander in. Before you start any task, figure out what needs to be different when you are done and when you expect to finish.

Were you following sound, step-by-step processes – tried and true methods – or were you muddling your way through? When you don’t have a method, the first step is to figure out a method! Taking a moment to plan your approach instead of just diving in will save you time. If you perform any task frequently, you should constantly refine and improve your method to make it more efficient and effective. Work with your co-workers to generate ideas and cooperation where appropriate:

What are the essential steps?

What would success look like at each step?

How long should each step take?

What could we do to simplify and accelerate this work?

Would templates or checklists help?

Do I need greater clarity of purpose, process, or roles?

Can we eliminate steps, cut corners that don’t really matter, or find better resources in or outside our group or company?

Did you have the right tools, information, and other resources at hand when you needed them or did you waste time searching and waiting? If you lost time, figure out how to prevent a recurrence. This is especially important for familiar, repeatable tasks.

Were you focused and disciplined or did you let time slip away? If you let time slip away, use the following steps to increase your focus and discipline tomorrow:

Know your top few priorities at any given moment. Be sure they are tasks that will make a difference.

Enlist an accountability partner and/or make public commitments if deadlines motivate you.

Were you unavoidably and unexpectedly interrupted? If so, could it have been prevented? Are you booking your day too solidly to allow for inevitable interruptions? If you book every minute of your day, you won’t be able to recover from any surprises

Do you believe you pretty much accomplished everything you could today? If yes, then quit beating yourself up and readjust your expectations. If not, why do you believe you could have accomplished more? (See steps 1-5.) Choose one new technique or action that will make tomorrow more successful

If you don’t know where the day went, put a tablet on the side of your desk and use it to log your activity for the next day several days. Figure out:

How often you are letting yourself get stuck, dwell too long, or get distracted

How often you are being ruled by perfectionism, self-editing, consistency for the sake of consistency, self-interruption

How often you are waiting for others

How often you are wandering without clear goals and a process, etc.

Also, figure out what tasks just aren’t up your alley and ought to be done by someone else.

Regardless of why you came up short, figure out how to deal with the work that didn’t and isn’t getting done:

Get help. Outsource. Delegate.

Decide to work extra time (temporarily!).

Get rid of employees and customers who take up more time than they are worth.

Leaders Rave About Ann:

I’ve done a lot of strategic planning, board retreats, and other facilitated activities, and I’ve never worked with anyone else who comes close to bringing the same value to the table as Ann Latham does.

I would readily recommend Ann. She is extremely effective in leading a group in strategy and problem solving. She is also flexible and easy to work with. I found this to be true during our planning and our two days together as a group.

Leaders Rave About Ann:

I’ve done a lot of strategic planning, board retreats, and other facilitated activities, and I’ve never worked with anyone else who comes close to bringing the same value to the table as Ann Latham does.